They were now on the outskirts of the village, and pointing to a cabin the Essene told Joseph that he would sleep there and enter on the morrow upon his probationship.  But, Father, may I not hear more?  If a brother be found guilty of sin, will he be cast out of the order?  The president answered that if one having been admitted to their community committed sins deserving of death, he was cast out and often perished by a most wretched fate, for being bound by oath and customs he could not even receive food from others but must eat grass, and with his body worn by famine he perishes.  Unless, the president added, we have pity on him at the last breath and think he has suffered sufficiently for his sins.

CHAP.  VII.

The hut that Joseph was bidden to enter was the last left in the cenoby for allotment, four proselytes having arrived last month.

No better commodity have we for the moment, the curator said, struck by the precarious shelter the hut offered—­a crazy door and a roof that let the starlight through at one end of the wall.  But the rains are over, he added, and the coverlet is a warm one.  On this he left Joseph, whom the bell would call to orison, too tired to sleep, turning vaguely from side to side, trying to hush the thoughts that hurtled through his clear brain—­that stars endure for ever, but the life of the palm-tree was as the life of the man who fed on its fruit.  The tree lived one hundred years, and among the Essenes a centenarian was no rare thing, but of what value to live a hundred years in the monotonous life of the cenoby?  And in his imagination, heightened by insomnia, the Essenes seemed to him like the sleeping trees.  If he remained he would become like them, while his father lived alone in Galilee!  Dan rose up before him and he could find no sense in the assurances he had given the president that he wished to be admitted into the order.  He seemed no longer to desire admission, and if he did desire it he could not, for his father’s sake, accept the admission.  Then why had he talked as he had done to the president?  He could not tell:  and it must have been while lying on his right side, trying to understand himself, what he was and why he was in the cenoby, that he fell into that deep and dreamless sleep from which he was awakened by a bell, and so suddenly that it seemed to him that he had not been asleep more than a few minutes.  It was no doubt the bell for morning prayer:  and only half awake he repaired with the other proselytes to the part of the village open to the sunrise.